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Saturday, Aug 16, 2008
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The hard path to be a passport-holder

S. Anandan

Warring staff, adverse verification report, apathy are the obstacles on the way

Photo: Vipin Chandran

ONLY THE BEGINNING: A long queue outside the Regional Passport Office, Kochi. —

Kochi: The general public may jostle away their time falling in a single file outside the premises of the Regional Passport Office here. Inside, the turf war between the All India Passport Employees Association (AIPEA) and the Regional Passport Officer (RPO) is snowballing into a major crisis.

Last week, the association submitted a memorandum to the RPO demanding review of his “vindictive, dictatorial, undemocratic and illogical attitude” before August 20 failing which it might resort to a strike. As a precursor, it would hold lunch-time demonstrations for two days from August 18.

It is, however, business as usual for G. Raveendran, the RPO, at office. He thinks he has been able to streamline office functioning in the past one year and is seeking to set trends. The association, in the meantime, rues that it is never factored into his scheme of things and charges him with underperformance and “issuing transfer threats to subordinates”. Just as a showdown seems imminent, the inevitable victims would be hapless passport applicants.

Internal strife is just one of the issues. Inordinate delays and official apathy are what the public find frustrating. Ask Kishore, an applicant who had a horrid time getting a passport. “I had gone to a relative’s place when the police verification took place. And, they simply gave an adverse report.” According to Sathish, an agent, “If you don’t make regular queries and pay up when necessary, your file may stay unopened with the police.”

However, the RPO and the police have together worked out a mechanism lately whereby all adverse reports are delivered to the RPO personally. “If the ground for adverse report turns out to be flimsy, we’ll try to set things right at our end,” says Mr. Raveendran.

Ditto with cases where inaccurate personal data made their way to passports. “If there is a genuine error from our side, we own up and initiate necessary steps to rectify that. But in most cases, it is the applicants who would be responsible for such goof-ups as entry is more often than not made by agents where upon they only sign,” says Mr. Raveendran.

Noticeably, most problems occur when there’s a wrong entry or an inadvertent omission of the present address in the application.

“Another occasion that causes delay is when people who have been repatriated on Emergency Certificate (EC) — also called ‘Out Pass’—applying for fresh passport. Many apply without furnishing EC details, and that is invariably delayed,” Mr. Raveendran says.

To add to their woes, some consulates, like the one in Jeddah, have issued directives not to issue passports to those sent back on EC for one year. “That is understandable as the Jeddah office itself issues about 500 ECs every day,” says an official.

From July 1 this year, the regional office started taking Tatkal passport applications only online. But here, too, the applicants should submit a hardcopy and remit fee at the office. The long queue outside has also got to do with the exponential increase in the number of applicants.

When the total number of applicants stood at 1,59,225 in 2003, the figure as on July 31 this year stands at 1,54,357. Of this, 1,45,913 passports have been issued. The grievance redressal system that is in place answers even e-mail queries. But applicants like Kishore think that it is just “another sarkari office when it comes to public interaction”. Even as there is an increase in workload, the staff strength has remained the same (about 135).

The stand-off between the association and the RPO is only going to worsen things.

(Some of the names have been changed to protect identities.)

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